I strongly suggest we keep Episode VII spoilers out until one month* from its release, which is January 17, 2016. At that point, I say go ahead and discuss full plot details from Episode VII.
We’re actually really lucky, since it is only 1 1/2 years until the release of the next movie in the new trilogy. I hope that we don’t end up with a delay. I can easily see Rian Johnson requesting a December release date due to time pressures, but I hope Disney holds him to the May 2017 release date. I think they plan to release another Star Wars movie in December 2017(is this true?), so perhaps they will really hold this release date as is.
Without spoiling Episode VII at this point, I can say that one great thing is that when leaving it, the crowd was very eagerly awaiting the next movie. I saw almost no anticipation after the prequel screenings and I have not seen this kind of anticipation since the Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers.
I, for one, can not wait.
*Is a month too long? Would two weeks be better? I’m not sure.
The first Anthology film, Rogue One, is December 2016, and I assume that the next one, young Han Solo probably, will be December 2018, but I guess it may be May 2018. May is traditional for Star Wars, this was only moved to December so it wouldn’t be rushed.
Shooting for Episode VIII begins in January, I believe. Rumours and sneaky pics are already imminent.
I’ve got a ticket to see it at 7 AM tomorrow morning on the 80-foot-tall Imax screen at Pacific Science Center - which, according to some clickbait article I saw earlier today, is one of the best screens in America to see it on. (To think it was my second choice - Cinerama sold out too fast.)
Cinerama Seattle is one of the few surviving Cinerama screens in the world, and it’s been significantly renovated since Paul Allen bought it. No time machine necessary. I saw the last Hobbit movie there last year.
EDIT: I just noticed the extra I in the thread title. Consider me whooshed.
I was mostly curious how you have managed to get a ticket for Episode 8. Assuming you mean Episode 7 which is currently in theaters in most of EU and soon in theaters in the US, you might try the other thread.
I am disappointed Lawrence Kasdan is not working on all three movies. I thought that while each movie would have a different director and co-writer, he would be involved in all three scripts. Looks like Rian Johnson is writing VIII and IX alone.
Is it known whether the story for 7-8-9 is already written? Seems like it would have made the most sense to write the full overall story arc, and then divide it into chunks, rather than writing episode 7 and just ending it in whatever state they wanted, with no idea what will happen next.
George Lucas wrote a treatment for 7-8-9, but it was rejected. Michael Arndt wrote a treatment (I think for the trilogy), but then his screenplay was heavily re-written, mostly adding in all the new Han Solo stuff (I assume the sequence on the freighter, and the attempted rescue, is Lawrence Kasdan’s input) so who knows if his treatment for the other films was kept. JJ Abrams wanted The Force Awakens to be mostly stand-alone, in the same way as ANH, which is to say a conclusion of most of the main plot. That leaves Rian Johnson to write almost whatever he wants for his movies, even though Abrams is producing and will have some input too.
In the end, what is known is not much, but from what I’ve read in the last few weeks, consistency in tone seems to be primarily important to everyone.
(The Anthology movies can have a different tone, though)
The end of Epi 7 (longest pregnant pause in history) makes you want to see what happened next, but the formula is that we’ll jump a year or more later and catch up in the middle of the action. I predict Rey (and certainly Luke) don’t even show up for the first 30 to 45 minutes.
Given that Johnson is a vastly superior filmmaking talent than Abrams, I am indeed looking forward to it a lot (while sadly, Colin Trevorrow handling IX means a likely drop, just as it did from V to VI).
